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Forum Week 1 – “Electronics , Instrument Building and Improvisation” – 26-07-07

Forum Week 1 - “Electronics , Instrument Building and Improvisation” – 26-07-07

The Victorian Synth:

You wont find one of these at the Allan's stock take clearance..

The first extension that came to mind regarding the V-synth concept was to increase the number of speakers. I ducked into an auto accessory retailer on Saturday and purchased a pair of reasonable quality 4” car stereo speakers for the ludicrously cheap price of twenty dollars (Electronic hardware wasn’t anywhere near this affordable when I was young enough to be wasting money on car audio…).

I then set about the task of reconfiguring an underutilised effect pedal holding structure, into a temporary workstation for fun with electronics at home. The logic behind restricting myself to a 0.7m x 0.6m workspace is that I will hopefully try not to think on too grand a scale with regard to my project.

I placed the speakers in part of the cardboard box that they came in, to simulate an actual speaker cabinet (poorly) and get some more bottom end from them. After attaching some alligator clips and wires, and creating a circuit with a nine volt battery, the art of noise awaited. I tried all of the suggested tricks from forum in some way or another, before settling on the positive to negative paper clip inside the cone idea. This seemed to offer me the most control for shaping sound from the device, even if the required ‘light’ touch took some getting used to. The resulting sounds emitted from bigger speakers of sturdier quality than what I worked with on Thursday were much more rewarding. The MP3 for this blog should be testament to that.

And to think, I was going to use this piece of wood for organising guitar pedals...

I’m thinking I may adopt this approach for my final instrument. Ideas at this stage are leaning toward attaching some moveable arms, which can be fixed in position for holding on to numerous specific and desirable timbres. Once the arms are all in place, then the user could turn them on and off at will via some switching devices. There would also be scope for further manipulation of the emitted sounds as well, but I’ll wait for future weeks of forum to see what may or may not be possible in regard to this.

Till next week, enjoy my latest glitch offering…

Click here to link to online folder containing Mp3 of this week’s effort.

Reference:

Haines, Christian. “Electronics, Instrument Building and Improvisation.” Workshop presented at EMU space, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 26^th July, 2007.

Tomczak, Sebastian. “Electronics, Instrument Building and Improvisation.” Workshop presented at EMU space, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 26^th July, 2007.

Whittington, Stephen. “Electronics, Instrument Building and Improvisation.” Workshop presented at EMU space, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 26^th July, 2007.

posted by David J Dowling @ 7:30 PM